Is God playing Survivor?

I admit, albeit reluctantly, that I have gotten hooked on the reality TV show “Survivor.” I didn’t mean for this to happen. The show just kind of sucked me in despite myself, and now I make sure I am home on Wednesday night to catch the latest episode.

This season, anyone who gets voted off at tribal council is sent to Redemption Island, where they get a chance to reenter the game. A young man named Matt is back on Redemption Island for a second stint. He managed to defeat all the other contestants that were sent there to challenge him, but no sooner had he returned to the real game than he was sent packing back to his isolated oasis.

Matt is a professed Christian, and it’s rather nice to see him praying and reading the Bible another contestant bequeathed him as she left. But when he says it’s “God’s will” that he be sent back to Redemption Island and it’s “God’s will” whether he wins or loses a challenge, I tilt my head, wrinkle my brow and think, “Really?”

Is God really playing Survivor? Is God really concerned with the antics of a reality game show that sometimes strikes me as a bogus set up? (Come on, people out on a tropical island for almost a month and NO ONE gets a tan? Come on, how come the cameras are always RIGHT THERE when someone finds a hidden immunity idol?) Is God really taking time out of God’s busy schedule to oversee whether or not Matt wins a challenge or gets voted off the island at tribal?

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I admire that Matt believes whatever he does on “Survivor” can bring glory to God. He has a perfect opportunity to demonstrate a forgiving, serene and faithful spirit among all the backbiting and backstabbing that is part and parcel of the game. If he is planning to tithe the $1 million prize, should he win it, that would be awesome. But to drag God into the game, knowing God has other, more pressing, more real-time, real life-and-death things to deal with … I don’t know. God, as the famous architect said, is in the details, but is God in the game Survivor …?